The monitoring of radioactive materials is of critical importance in many fields. Radioactive material accounting and control is often required by law and/or treaty. However, radioactive material monitoring is typically performed indirectly, by the observation of storage containers or the logging of RFID tags placed on the storage containers. In such situations, it is possible that radioactive material is removed while a storage container remains. Thus, it is not recognized that radioactive material is actually gone.
Thus, what are still needed in the art are devices and methods for directly monitoring the presence/location of a radioactive material by monitoring gamma and/or neutron emission from the radioactive material in real time. Preferably, these devices and methods would generate and utilize a three-dimensional (3D) map of a storage area and monitor changes over time with an alarm triggered by predetermined changes.